Fun on stau.space

I Love Patina

sona@stau.space (Sona Tau Estrada Rivera) — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:27:59 -0400

This blog post will be slightly different than the usual Mathematics/CompSci focused posting.

When I used to study architecture, because I didn’t own a computer that had Windows installed on it, I would do many of the drawings required for the courses by hand. There I learned the absolute value there is in using tools which were made specifically for a single task. For example, I started out using drawing pencils (the ones that come in different hardness) to do the drawings. You’ll notice eventually that although the hardness is very important for drawing, the thickness with which the lines get made is equally if not more important. This meant that using regular wooden drawing pencils wouldn’t cut it, they would get blunt and thicken too fast. This is where mechanical drawing pencils came in. To this day, mechanical drawing pencils are my go-to when writing things down because of their versatility and resilience. Something else I’ve noticed about owning a single one of these pencils for the past 8 years is: this pencil might be plastic in some places and metal in others, but the used look of it looks very nice.

The best Algebraic Structure

sona@stau.space (Sona Tau Estrada Rivera) — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:48:48 -0400

An algebraic structure is a set with some functions associated to it that meet some axioms. Semi-groups, fields, loops, and magmas are all examples of algebraic structures. I won’t assume that the reader has dealt with any of these structures but I will assume that you know about set cardinality and the fact that these structures were originally created, mostly, in an abstract way in order to model different things. The best example for this, from a programming perspective, is that of the semigroup. If you want to parallelize a procedure in your program, a way to do this would be to demonstrate it forms a semigroup. If so, parallelizing it is super easy, since a semigroup’s operation is associative. I won’t go into too much detail on this since this is not the point of this post.

The Eight Plain Text Questions

sona@stau.space (Sona Tau Estrada Rivera) — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:10:57 -0400

Based off Ellane W’s based off Scott Nesbit’s Eight questions for Donald Brown.

When did you start using plain text?

High school, around 2016.

Why did you start using plain text?

I had seen a couple videos at the time about Linux, and about a week later I had been given a laptop. Like many experts in their field, I am acutely aware of all the ways in which the systems I work with can run optimally and how easily they can also break. Many software developers know and strive towards having resilient systems, built in the most elegant way possible. I used to take notes by hand in notebooks, and computers seemed very interesting to me back then. Because of this, I had a series of requirements which my writing system had to meet: